BY NOW some of the African leaders who met last week in Lusaka, will have briefed their cabinets and advisers back home, on the potentially momentous events that took place at the 37th and final meeting of the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The OAU is being replaced by the African Union, (AU) which is planned to represent far more than just a change of name. It was agreed in Lusaka that the AU would have its own commission, secretariat, parliament and central bank.
Amara Essy, a former foreign minister of the Ivory Coast was chosen as the AU’s first secretary general. Essy may, however, be wondering precisely how he is going to set about his herculean task, because that is what it is. The African Union currently represents nothing more than the will of African heads of state, led to a large degree by the South Africans. Essy has to take his ambitious mandate and start to achieve what is possible, what investment bankers and consultants like to call the “quick wins”.
Africa’s post-colonial history is littered with grandiose projects and schemes that came to nothing, which rotted on the vine in the dangerous humidity of African politics. It is right that Africa’s leaders should have set such high ambitions, but it is absurd to believe that these can be anything other than distant targets, to be worked toward slowly and carefully. The European Union, which was cited by some delegates at Lusaka as the model to aim for, began in the wreckage of World War II as a simple organization focused on iron and steel. It should not be doubted that in the long run, the AU’s agenda can be achieved. Even the proposed central bank is not a pipe dream. Francophone West African states for a long time successfully operated a single currency tied to the French franc of their former colonial occupiers.
But the AU will not begin to acquire credibility unless everyone is clear about the constraints and traps that lie in its path. Many African states are themselves inherently politically unstable, with frontiers doodled on maps by distant officials in the old colonial power. Thus, traditional foes have often been bundled together within the same state.
From its founding in 1963, the OAU’s summits coincided with rebellions. While African leaders were mixing with their peers in Addis Ababa, the OAU’s headerquarters in Ethiopia or in some other African capital, putschists back home took the opportunity to seize power. Thus, many OAU summits had some notable absentees among leaders who were unsure of their continued political support. It almost became a badge of political strength to be able to attend an OAU summit. Careful African leaders often included suspected rivals in their summit delegations, so that they could keep an eye on them.
And herein lies one of the AUs first challenges. How many of the African heads of state in Lusaka last week, will actually have had colleagues back home whom they would bother to brief ? And how many will have returned to their capitals determined to begin the long process of selling the idea of African unity to a poor and undernourished population, who are more concerned about where their next meal is coming from?
To succeed, the AU needs to establish itself as a blameless, even-handed and most importantly, entirely uncorruptible organization. It will need to include visionaries along with realists and it will have to establish for itself an existence free from the whims of a few powerful African nations. Africa has always been long on promise and short on achievement. The AU is an idea packed full of promise. Will it be given the means to achieve even a fraction of its potential?
